


Memory and Song

by ScreechTheMighty



Series: some things you will remember [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Bullshit self-indulgent AU, Gen, Jack is alive somehow fight me, post season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-27 23:57:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10057784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScreechTheMighty/pseuds/ScreechTheMighty
Summary: Foggy had never understood why Matt, whose musical preferences usually ran acoustic, liked this one random eighties pop song. Now he knew.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is really just an extended headcanon based on an idea I had while doing the dishes. Features songs by Toto, David Bowie, and Ireland.

Matt Murdock kept a lot of secrets. But Foggy couldn’t, in good faith, say that any of those secrets were about his dad. There were no lies, no dodged questions, nothing like that; he just hadn’t talked about him that much. Foggy understood. It was a painful subject. That was why he’d never asked too many questions. As a result, the list of things Foggy knew about Jack Murdock before this whole incident was as followed:

  1. Drank scotch
  2. Gave Matt a sip of that scotch when Matt was nine
  3. Matt had to stitch him up
  4. He was a boxer
  5. Only ever wanted Matt to use his head and not his fists (awkward)
  6. His boxing name was Battlin’ Jack



That didn’t say much about who he was as a person, or a parent, or anything like that. So, yeah, the resurrection of Jonathan Michael Murdock (a seventh fact he’d learned when he and Matt had trekked down to the cemetery to find the headstone falling over and the ground recently disturbed, but no clues as to who had done it) made him a bit nosy. Just a little bit. He was fighting the urge to get too personal, but it was _really_ hard.

Especially when the man was sitting in Foggy’s office, staring out Foggy’s window, listening to music on Foggy’s phone with headphones they’d stolen from Matt. He would’ve been hanging out in Matt’s office, usually, but Matt was out and he couldn’t hang out in the front with Karen. Baseball caps and hoodies were not the best disguise, and until they figured out how, exactly, they were going to re-integrate a man who’d been dead for twenty years into society, Jack had to stay incognito. It was quiet in the office—most people were starting to head home, and they were only in the office because they had a contract case and Matt liked to hang around late Friday and Saturday nights to help out anyone who ended up in the drunk tank. The only sounds were Karen shuffling paperwork, cars outside, and just under that, someone humming. Jack humming. It took Foggy a few seconds to work out the tune, but when he did…

“Is that Toto?”

Jack glanced at Foggy, did a double-take, and slipped the headphones off. “What?”

“Is that Toto? ‘Africa?’”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s…”  Jack ducked his head. “I used to sing that one to Matt, actually. When he was little.”

_Whoa, whoa, hold the phone._ That piece of information was solid gold right there, and Foggy didn’t even have to dig for it. “You’re kidding me.”

“Uhm…no, why?”

Before Foggy could answer, the door opened. “Hey, Karen,” he heard Matt say.

“Hey, Matt. Your dad’s with Foggy.”

“Yeah, I’m his new best friend now,” Foggy teased. This was _perfect._ He hoped his heartbeat wasn’t giving away anything. “He’s been telling me embarrassing baby stories the whole time. I know all your secrets now.”

“Oh, God, no. Betrayed by my father and my best friend. I’ll never recover,” Matt shot back. Jack laughed. Foggy heard something being put down in the snack room. “Just let me finish this other case file and we can get to that contract, okay?”

“Sure thing, buddy.” Foggy gestured for Jack to hand him back the phone; Jack looked confused, but passed the phone over. “I’ve got something to wrap up anyway. Just give me five.” Jack went to ask a question, but Foggy shushed him as quietly as possible. Matt could probably hear them from his office. He wanted this to be a surprise. Foggy started the song back up and turned up the volume—not super loud, not loud enough to raise suspicion, but loud enough that Matt could hear it clearly. He gestured for Jack to watch Matt’s office and mouthed _Watch_.

_-hat I must do what's right  
        Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti_

There were a few constants in the universe. Water was wet, there was always at least one person in the drunk tank over the weekend who needed help, and every person alive had at _least_ one song that they couldn’t help singing along to. Unfortunately for Matt, Foggy knew _every_ one of Matt’s super-secret sing-along songs.

              _I seek to cure what's deep inside,  
                         frightened of this thing that I've become…_

Foggy thought heard someone in the office across the way singing along. He _definitely_ heard it when the chorus hit:

_It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you  
      There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do…_

And from the look on his face, Jack heard it too. His eyes darted from Matt’s office to Foggy as a smile rapidly grew on his face. “Oh my _god…_ ”

                    _I bless the rains down in Africa  
                           Gonna take some time to do the things we never have…_

“He _loves_ this song,” Foggy whispered, risking Matt hearing them to explain. “He sang it sophomore year the one time I got him to a karaoke bar. I think I still have the video.”

Jack pressed a hand to his mouth. He looked delighted, which was exactly the reaction Foggy had been hoping for. Foggy had never understood why Matt, whose musical preferences usually ran acoustic, liked this _one_ random eighties pop song. Now he knew. There was one more thing he knew about Matt, and about Jack.

_Hurry, boy, she’s waiting there for you…_

Matt sang along to the rest of the song while Jack and Foggy listened. The door was open enough that he could see Karen leaning over her desk to listen to Matt, then glance Foggy’s way with a confused look on her face. Foggy just grinned in response.

If Matt caught on to the fact that Foggy had played the song aloud on purpose, he didn’t say anything about it.

+++++

“Matt?”

“Yeah?” Matt had to hold on to his elbow now. Back when he was ten, Jack used to rest a hand on his shoulder whenever they went places. Just enough that Matt would know he was there, enough to guide him if he had to. He was too tall for that now. “What’s up?”

“Do you, uh…do you remember…” Jack licked his lips. “Starman?”

“Star…the Bowie song?” Matt grinned. “That one you _hated_ but you kept singing anyway?”

Well, that answered that question. Jack grimaced. “Yeah, that’s…that’s the one…”

“ _There's a starman waiting in the sky…He'd like to come and meet us-_ ”

“ _God,_ Matt, I finally got that song out of my head after twenty years.” Matt laughed, a bright sound that made it hard for to stay annoyed with him. “Jesus.”

“If you hated it so much, why did you always sing it to me?”

“…you remember that?”

“Yeah, I remember. It was…Starman, Africa, and…” Matt trailed off contemplatively. “What was that one in Irish?”

Jack had to think about it. “I don’t know if it’s got a name. But my mom used to sing me that when I was little.” Jack didn’t know what a word of that old lullaby meant, or if he was pronouncing any of it right. But he’d sang it to Matt, all the time. It calmed him down like nothing else. “How’d it go?”

It was quiet for a bit. When Jack glanced at Matt, he was frowning a bit. Since Jack had come back, people kept saying they looked a lot alike. That frown, though, reminded him more of Maggie. His heart ached at the thought. As he watched, Matt started humming quietly. It was the right tune—that old lullaby.

_Codalaígí, codalaígí, cois an chlaí amuigh…_

“Yeah, that’s it. That’s it.” That just raised another question he’d wanted to ask, but had been afraid to for weeks. _Just spit it out, just spit it out, Jack._ “How much else do you remember?”

“Uh…” Matt’s grip on Jack’s elbow tightened for a second. “Define remember? A lot of the visual memories are going, but I remember sounds, smells…that kind of thing. Not perfectly, but as well as can be expected seeing how it was all a long time ago.”

He’d expected that. Twenty years _was_ a long time. Jack wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It stung to think that there were things Matt was forgetting about his childhood ( _does he remember what I look like?_ ) but that was life, wasn’t it? Jack didn’t remember too much about when he was ten. And there were things Matt was better off forgetting, anyway. The hard parts. His mother leaving. Probably for the best he didn’t remember that.

“Foggy played that song on purpose, didn’t he?”

Matt’s question snapped Jack out of his thoughts. It took him a second to register what he’d been asked, then _another_ to think of the right response. “I’m pleading the fifth on that one, kid. That’s the right one, right? Pleading the fifth?”

Matt laughed. “Yeah, yeah, that’s the one. Fine.” He managed to smack Jack in the shins with his cane—gently, but he didn’t even break a stride when he did it. “You two are going to have to work harder if you want to embarrass me.”

“I would _never_. You respect your father, young man.”Jack nudged him ( _carefully_ , he wasn’t trying to knock his kid over). “You know what _I_ remember? You being a smartass growing up. Looks like that hasn’t changed.”

“Nope. You’re stuck with me like this.”

_Stuck_. Jack knew. And he was thrilled about it.


End file.
